OPENING DAY AT CITI FIELD – HINTS AND TIPS.

It’s finally here! I’m excited for tomorrow night, but of course wish it wasn’t at night. I like taking the day off. I like riding the train to the game when everyone else is sitting in the office, working. I like giving the sun a chance to warm us up. But, it is what it is. Thanks, ESPN official schedulers.

My advice to everyone heading out to Citi Field on Monday:

PREGAME CEREMONIES ARE STARTING AT 6:30!

Get there as early as you can. Everything is new: the ticket scanners, the turnstiles, the security guards, the elevators, the escalators, everything. You don’t know the quickest way to your seat, and even if you do, everyone else doesn’t. People are going to be walking around on ‘stroll’ mode and everything is just going to take longer.

If you absolutely need to walk in through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, I hear you, and wouldn’t try to dissuade you if that’s a tradition you need to observe. But plan on lines and plan on it going slowly.

Everyone else, don’t be on automatic pilot, go in a different gate. If you’re getting there early (like BP early) you want the Left Field gate which will open at 4:40pm. Everything else will open at 5:40. If you’re in the Pepsi Porch, head for the Right Field gate. If you want the closest entrance to the food and/or the bullpens, it’s the Bullpen Gate facing 126th. If every person coming to Citi tomorrow heads for the Rotunda you’ll be standing outside at first pitch.

If you want to eat at one of the specialty concessions, go get your food as soon as you get there. No one has a real sense yet of what the lines will be like, since we haven’t had a game that actually matters at the ballpark yet.

Bring extra layers. It’s still going to be 5 degrees cooler at Willets Point than it is everywhere else. We also don’t know what the new building will do with the wind. It’s April baseball, if you dress for Citi the way you dressed for Shea, you won’t be cold.